Robert Asprin - Thieves World

Rosanda gained some self-control as he talked. 'Oh, my, oh, my,' she wheezed, 'you unbelievable, wonderful men.'

An ear-piercing trill slashed across her voice. The escapers looked behind them. At the entrance to the house stood a thickset middle-aged person in the scarlet robe of a ranking priest of Ils. He held a pipe to his mouth and blew. 'Hazroah!' Rosanda shrilled. 'The ringleader!'

'The High Flamen -' Danlis began.

A rush in the air interrupted. Cappen flung his vision skyward and knew the nightmare was true. The sikkintair was descending. Hazroah had summoned it.

'Why, you son of a bitch!' Jamie roared. Still well behind the rest, he lifted his spear, brought it back, flung it with his whole strength and weight. The point went home in Hazroah's breast. Ribs did not stop it. He spouted blood, crumpled, and spouted no more. The shaft quivered above his body.

But the sikkintair's vast wings eclipsed the sun. Jamie rejoined his band and plucked the second spear from Cappen's fingers. 'Hurry on, lad/he ordered. 'Get them to safety.'

'Leave you? No!' protested his comrade. Jamie spat an oath. 'Do you want the whole faring to've gone for naught? Hurry, I said!'

Danlis tugged at Cappen's sleeve. 'He's right. The state requires our testimony.'

Cappen stumbled onward. From time to time he glanced back. In the shadow of the wings, Jamie's hair blazed. He stood foursquare, spear grasped as a huntsman does. Agape, the Flying Knife rushed down upon him. Jamie thrust straight between those jaws, and twisted.

The monster let out a sawtoothed shriek. Its wings threshed, made thundercrack, it swooped by, a foot raked. Jamie had his claymore out. He parried the blow.

The sikkintair rose. The shaft waggled from its throat. It spread great ebon membranes, looped, and came back earthward. Its claws were before it. Air whirred behind.

Jamie stood his ground, sword in right hand, knife in left. As the talons smote, he fended them off with the dirk. Blood sprang from his thigh, but his byrnie took most of the edged sweep. And his sword hewed. The sikkintair ululated again. It tried to ascend, and couldn't.

Jamie had crippled its left wing. It landed - Cappen felt the impact through soles and bones - and hitched itself towards him. From around the spear came a geyser hiss.

Jamie held fast where he was. As fangs struck at him, he sidestepped, sprang back, and threw his shoulders against the shaft. Leverage swung jaws aside. He glided by the neck towards the forequarters. Both of his blades attacked the spine.

Cappen and the women hastened on.

They were almost at the pergola when footfalls drew his eyes rearwards. Jamie loped at an overtaking pace. Behind him, the sikkintair lay in a heap.

The redhead pulled alongside. 'Hai, what a fight!' he panted. 'Thanks for this journey, friend! A drinking bout's worth of thanks!'

They mounted the death-defiled stairs. Cappen peered across miles. Wings beat in heaven, from the direction of the mountains. Horror stabbed his guts. 'Look!' He could barely croak.

Jamie squinted. 'More of them,' he said. 'A score, maybe. We can't cope with so many. An-army couldn't.'

'That whistle was heard farther away than mortals would hear,' Danlis added starkly.

'What do we linger for?' Rosanda wailed. 'Come, take us home!'

'And the sikkintairs follow?' Jamie retorted. 'No. I've my lassies, and kinfolk, and -' He moved to stand before the parchment. Edged metal dripped in his hands; red lay splashed across helm, ringmail, clothing, face. His grin broke forth, wry. 'A spaewife once told me I'd die on the far side of strangeness. I'll wager she didn't know her own strength.'

'You assume that the mission of the beasts is to destroy us, and when that is done they will return to their lairs.' The tone Danlis used might have served for a remark about the weather.

'Aye, what else? The harm they'd wreak would be in a hunt for us. But put to such trouble, they could grow furious and harry our whole world. That's the more likely when Hazroah lies skewered. Who else can control them?'

'None that I know of, and he talked quite frankly to us.' She nodded. 'Yes, it behoves us to die where we are.' Rosanda sank down and blubbered. Danlis showed irritation. 'Up!' she commanded her mistress. 'Up and meet your fate like a Rankan matron!'

Cappen goggled hopelessly at her. She gave him a smile. 'Have no regrets, dear,' she said. 'You did well. The conspiracy against the state has been checked.'

The far side of strangeness - check - chessboard - that version of chess where you pretend the right and left sides of the board are identical on a cylinder tumbled through Cappen. The Flying Knives drew closer fast. Curious aspects of geometry -

Lightning-smitten, he knew ... or guessed he did ... 'No, Jamie, we go!' he yelled.

'To no avail save reaping of innocents?' The big man hunched his shoulders. 'Never.'

'Jamie, let us by! I can close the gate. I swear I can - I swear by - by Eshi -'

The Northerner locked eyes with Cappen for a span that grew. At last: 'You are my brother in arms.' He stood aside. 'Go on.'

The sikkintairs were so near that the noise of their speed reached Cappen. He urged Danlis towards the scroll. She lifted her skirt a trifle, revealing a dainty ankle, and stepped through. He hauled on Rosanda's wrist. The woman wavered to her feet but seemed unable to find her direction. Cappen took an arm and passed it into the next world for Danlis to pull. Himself, he gave a mighty shove on milady's buttocks. She crossed over.

He did. And Jamie.

Beneath the temple dome, Cappen's rapier reached high and slashed. Louder came the racket of cloven air. Cappen severed the upper cords. The parchment fell, wrinkling, crackling. He dropped his weapon, a-clang, squatted, and stretched his arms wide. The free corners he seized. He pulled them to the corners that were still secured, to make a closed band of the scroll.

From it sounded monstrous thumps and scrapes. The sikkintairs were crawling into the pergola. For them the portal must hang unchanged, open for their hunting.

Cappen gave that which he held a half-twist and brought the edges back together.

Thus he created a surface which had but a single side and a single edge. Thus he obliterated the gate.

He had not been sure what would follow. He had fleetingly supposed he would smuggle the scroll out, held in its paradoxical form, and eventually glue it unless he could burn it. But upon the instant that he completed the twist and juncture, the parchment was gone. Enas Yorl told him afterwards that he had made it impossible for the thing to exist.

Air rushed in where the gate had been, crack and hiss. Cappen heard that sound as it were an alien word of incantation: 'Mobius-s-s.'

Having stolen out of the temple and some distance thence, the party stopped for a few minutes of recovery before they proceeded to Molin's house.

This was in a blind alley off the avenue, a brick-paved recess where flowers grew in planters, shared by the fanes of two small and gentle gods. Wind had died away, stars glimmered bright, a half moon stood above easterly roofs and cast wan argence. Afar, a tomcat serenaded his intended.

Rosanda had gotten back a measure of equilibrium. She cast herself against Jamie's breast. 'Oh, hero, hero,' she crooned, 'you shall have reward, yes, treasure, ennoblement, everything!' She snuggled. 'But nothing greater than my unbounded thanks ...'

The Northerner cocked an eyebrow at Cappen. The bard shook his head a little. Jamie nodded in understanding, and disengaged. 'Uh, have a care, milady,' he said. 'Pressing against ringmail, all bloody and sweaty too, can't be good for a complexion.'

Even if one rescues them, it is not wise to trifle with the wives of magnates.